the diverse degrees: Tertullian speaks of “marking the forehead of a Miles,” which may have been the branding of a Mithraic sign; honey was applied to the tongue and hands of the Leo and the Perses. A sacred communion of bread, water and possibly wine, compared by the Christian apologists to the Eucharist, was administered to the mystic who was entering upon one of the advanced degrees, perhaps Leo. The ceremony was probably commemorative of the banquet of Mithras and Helios before the former’s ascension, and its effect strength of body, wisdom, prosperity, power to resist evil, and participation in the immortality enjoyed by the god himself. Other features reminiscent of the original barbarous rites in the primitive caverns of the East, no doubt also occupied a place in the cult; bandaging of eyes, binding of hands with the intestines of a fowl, leaping over a ditch filled with water, witnessing a simulated murder, are mentioned by the Pseudo-Augustine; and the manipulation of lights in the crypt, the administration of oaths, and the repetition of the sacred formulae, all contributed toward inducing state of ecstatic exaltation. What in the opinion of Albrecht Dieterich (Eine Mithrasliturgie, Leipzig, 1903) is a Mithras liturgy is preserved in a Greek MS. of Egyptian origin of about A.D. 300. It is the ritual of a magician, imbedded in which, and alternating with magic formulae and other occult matter, are a number of invocations and prayers which Dieterich reconstructs as a liturgy in use by the clergy of Mithras between A.D. 100 and 300, and adapted to this new use about the latter date.
The Mithraic priest, sacerdos or antistes, was sometimes also of the degree of pater. Tertullian (De praescr. haeret. 40) calls the chief priest summus pontifex, probably the pater patrum who had general supervision of all the initiates in one city, and states that he could marry but once. According to the same author, there were Mithraic, as well as Christian, virgines et continentes. Besides the administration of sacraments and the celebration of offices on special occasions, the priest kept alight the eternal fire on the altar, addressed prayers to the Sun at dawn, midday and twilight, turning towards east, south and west respectively. Clad in Eastern paraphernalia, he officiated at the numerous sacrifices indicated by the remains of iron and bronze knives, hatchets, chains, ashes and bones of oxen, sheep, goats, swine, fowl, &c. There was pouring of libations, chanting and music, and bells and candles were employed in the service. Each day of the week was marked by the adoration of a special planet, the sun being the most sacred of all, and certain dates, perhaps the sixteenth of each month and the equinoxes, in conformity with the character of Mithras as mediator, were set aside for special festivals.
The Mithraic community of worshippers, besides being a spiritual fraternity, was a legal corporation enjoying the right of holding property, with temporal officials at its head, like any other sodalitas: there were the decuriones and decem primi, governing councils resembling assembly and senate in cities; magistri, annually elected presidents; curatores, financial agents; defensores, advocates; and patroni, protectors among the influential. It may be that a single temple was the resort of several small associations of worshippers which were subdivisions of the whole community. The cult was supported mainly by voluntary contribution. An abundance of epigraphic evidence testifies to the devotion of rich and poor alike.
III. Moral Influence.—The rapid advance of Mithraism was due to its human qualities. Its communities were bound together by a sense of close fraternal relation. Its democracy obliterated the distinctions between rich and poor; slave and senator became subject to the same rule, eligible for the same honours, partook of the same communion, and were interred in the same type of sepulchre, to await the same resurrection. The reward of title and degree and the consequent rise in the esteem of his fellows and himself was also a strong incentive; but the Mithraic faith itself was the greatest factor. The impressiveness and the stimulating power of the mystic ceremonies, the consciousness of being the privileged possessor of the secret wisdom of the ancients, the sense of purification from sin, and the expectation of a better life where there was to be compensation for the sufferings of this world—were all strong appeals to human nature. The necessity of moral rectitude was itself an incentive. Courage, watchfulness, striving for purity, were all necessary in the incessant combat with the forces of evil. Resistance to sensuality was one aspect of the struggle, and asceticism was not unknown. Mithras was ever on the side of the faithful, who were certain to triumph both in this world and the next. The worthy soul ascended to its former home in the skies by seven gates or degrees, while the unworthy soul descended to the realms of Ahriman. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was accompanied by that of the resurrection of the flesh; the struggle between good and evil was one day to cease, and the divine bull was to appear on earth, Mithras was to descend to call all men from their tombs and to separate the good from the bad. The bull was to be sacrificed to Mithras, who was to mingle its fat with consecrated wine and give to drink of it to the just, rendering them immortal, while the unjust, together with Ahriman and his spirits, were to be destroyed by a fire sent from Heaven by Ormazd. The universe, renewed, was to enjoy eternal happiness.
IV. Relation to Christianity.—The most interesting aspect of Mithraism is its antagonism to Christianity. Both religions were of Oriental origin; they were propagated about the same time, and spread with equal rapidity on account of the same causes, viz. the unity of the political world and the debasement of its moral life. At the end of the 2nd century each had advanced to the farthest limits of the empire, though the one possessed greatest strength on the frontiers of the Teutonic countries, along the Danube and the Rhine, while the other throve especially in Asia and Africa. The points of collision were especially at Rome, in Africa, and in the Rhone Valley, and the struggle was the more obstinate because of the resemblances between the two religions, which were so numerous and so close as to be the subject of remark as early as the 2nd century, and the cause of mutual recrimination. The fraternal and democratic spirit of the first communities, and their humble origin; the identification of the object of adoration with light and the Sun; the legends of the shepherds with their gifts and adoration, the flood, and the ark; the representation in art of the fiery chariot, the drawing of water from the rock; the use of bell and candle, holy water and the communion; the sanctification of Sunday and of the 25th of December; the insistence on moral conduct, the emphasis placed upon abstinence and self-control; the doctrine of heaven and hell, of primitive revelation, of the mediation of the Logos emanating from the divine, the atoning sacrifice, the constant warfare between good and evil and the final triumph of the former, the immortality of the soul, the last judgment, the resurrection of the flesh and the fiery destruction of the universe—are some of the resemblances which, whether real or only apparent, enabled Mithraism to prolong its resistance to Christianity. At their root lay a common Eastern origin rather than any borrowing.
On the other hand, there were important contrasts between the two. Mithraism courted the favour of Roman paganism and combined monotheism with polytheism, while Christianity was uncompromising. The former as a consequence won large numbers of supporters who were drawn by the possibility it afforded of adopting an attractive faith which did not involve a rupture with the religion of Roman society, and consequently with the state. In the middle of the 3rd century Mithraism seemed on the verge of becoming the universal religion. Its eminence, however, was so largely based upon dalliance with Roman society, its weakness so great in having only a mythical character, instead of a personality, as an object of adoration, and in excluding women from its privileges, that it fell rapidly before the assaults of Christianity. Manichaeism, which combined the adoration of Zoroaster and Christ, became the refuge of those supporters of Mithraism who were inclined to compromise, while many found the transition to orthodox Christianity easy because of its very resemblance to their old faith.
